In order to provide a new communications service or product to a customer, the product/service must first be validated and checked for feasibility. Any additional equipment must then be identified and installed before activation of the product/service on the target network. In addition to this, contracts must be issued and billing instigated to enable the service provider to obtain payment for the new communications service or product. This requires complex process coordination and typically multiple systems exist to manage the installation and day to day operation of required communications service/product building blocks.
Currently service providers offer a limited number of services/products however, with the deployment of new network technologies it is expected that a large number of new services will be enabled. With a substantially larger number of services to deal with, the current methods of service delivery which require an end to end view of the entire delivery process across all involved operational systems for each and every product and service variation and the creation of a bespoke workflow for each product offered to each customer, will be too expensive, labour intensive and inflexible.